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Cognitive Neuroscience > M04 - Emotion & Social Cognition > Flashcards

M04 - Emotion & Social Cognition Flashcards

1
Q

What are emotions?

A

Emotions are sets of physiological responses, actions tendencies and subjective feeling that adaptively engage humans and other animals to react to events of biological and/or individual significance.
Physiology + Behavior + Feeling = Emotion

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2
Q

What components does the categorical theory have?

A

Basic emotions & Complex emotions

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3
Q

What characteristics do basic emotions have?

A
  • innate
  • pan-cultural (across all cultures)
  • evolutionarily old
  • shared with other species
  • expressed particularly through physiological patterns and facial configurations
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4
Q

What characteristics do complex emotions have?

A
  • learned
  • socially and culturally shaped
  • evolutionarily new
  • most evident in humans
  • expressed by a combination of the response patterns that characterize basic emotions
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5
Q

What basic emotions are there?

A
  • anger
  • sadness
  • happiness
  • fear
  • disgust
  • surprise
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6
Q

What is the dimensional theory of emotions?

A

Describes emotions through a point within a complex space that include two or more continuous dimensions

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7
Q

What dimensional theory models do we have?

A

Vector model & Circumplex model

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8
Q

Explain the vector model.

A
  • two-dimensional model consists of vectors that point in two directions, representing a “boomerang” shape
  • assumes that there is always an underlying arousal dimension, and that valence determines the direction in which a particular emotion lies.
  • high arousal states are differentiated by their valence, whereas low arousal states are more neutral and are represented near the meeting point of the vectors.
  • most widely used in the testing of a word and picture stimuli
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9
Q

Give an example for the vector model.

A

For example, a positive valence would shift the emotion up the top vector and a negative valence would shift the emotion down the bottom vector.

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10
Q

Explain the circumplex model.

A
  • suggests that emotions are distributed in a two-dimensional circular space, containing arousal and valence dimensions
  • Arousal represents the vertical axis and valence represents the horizontal axis, while the center of the circle represents a neutral valence and a medium level of arousal.
  • emotional states can be represented at any level of valence and arousal, or at a neutral level of one or both of these factors.
  • most commonly to test stimuli of emotion words, emotional facial expressions, and affective states
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11
Q

What are the theories to classify emotions?

A
  • Categorical theories
  • Dimensional theories
  • Component-process theories
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12
Q

What does the component-process theory state?

A
  • emotions are fluid (not fixed states)
  • Interaction of multiple processes
    • relating emotions according to similarity in appraisal (assessment)
  • not studied with neuroscience methos much
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13
Q

What brain region was studied in relation to emotions in the 70s and 80s?

A

Neocortex

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14
Q

What is the recent focus of brain regions related to emotions?

A
  • Vertical integration models, meaning - models that relate limbic systems with a neocortical contribution
  • integrated account of emotion processing across many levels of the nervous system
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15
Q

What are vertical integration models?

A
  • models that relate to the limbic systems with neocortical contribution
  • integrated account of emotion processing across many levels of nervous system
  • focused on relating these levels
    of processing with each other and with changes in the body
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16
Q

On which process is the best-characterized integration model based on?

A

Fear conditioning

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17
Q

Give an example of vertical integration models.

A

Fear conditioning and fear modification

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18
Q

What is the central brain structure for fear conditioning?

A

Amygdala

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19
Q

How can you measure fear output?

A
  • skin conductance response
  • fear-output startle
  • pupil dilation
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20
Q

What structures are mostly involved in fear acquisition?

A
  • Amygdala
  • Thalamus
  • ACC (anterior cingulate cortex)
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21
Q

What is the rapid subcortical pathway?

A

Direct input from thalamus to amygdala that bypasses primary sensory cortical reception areas

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22
Q

What is the slower cortical route?

A

Thalamus to neocortex to amygdala

23
Q

What are symptoms of amygdala damage?

A

Reduced startle and Skin Conductance response

24
Q

Is fear modification necessary over time?

A

Yes.

25
Q

What is emotional preservation?

A

Continuous deployment of cognitive strategies when they are no longer appropriate in problem solving tasks.

26
Q

What is the hallmark of anxiety disorders?

A

Emotional perservation

27
Q

What is fear extinction?

A

The reduction of fear response due to the uncoupling of unconditioned and conditioned stimuli

28
Q

Which brain region is important in the extinction of fear?

A

ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)

29
Q

What is the effect of stimulating the prefrontal-amygdala pathway?

A

The stimulation can reduce conditioned fear behavior.

30
Q

Does the vmPFC affect the amygdala?

A

Yes.

31
Q

What are the side effects of humans with vmPFC damage?

A

Difficulty changing associations between stimuli and reward.

32
Q

What is a possible treatment for anxiety disorder?

A

Stimulate the prefrontal-amygdala

33
Q

What is contextual fear conditioning?

A

Fear associated with certain places

34
Q

Which brain area is associated with contextual fear conditioning?

A

The hippocampus

35
Q

How does the contextual fear conditioning change when there is a lesion/damage to the hippocampus?

A

Normal conditioning to cues, but not to context

36
Q

What is the somatic marker hypothesis?

A

The somatic marker hypothesis explains the role of emotion in decision making.

37
Q

What are the components of the somatic marker hypothesis?

A

factual info - vmPFC - bioregulatory states
(these all in a particular situation)

38
Q

What is the process of the somatic marker hypothesis?

A
  1. Recalling relevant somatic markers which are autonomic, endocrine and musculoskeletal changes of emotional state (feelings in the body that are associated with emotions e.g. heartbeat with anxiety) to a particular situation.
  2. vmPFC triggers reactivation of somatosensory pattern that describes appropriate emotion(physical sensation in response to recalled emotion) through amygdala
  3. This process either direct or indirect
39
Q

Describe the direct and indirect process of the somatic marker hypothesis.

A

Direct: expression of the appropriate visceral response (loop that involves physical responses) aka direct physical when sth happens
Indirect: stimulating the somatosensory pattern in the insula and somatosensory cortex (simulating the sensations without actually evoking physical changes) aka physical sensation triggered by memory

40
Q

What are the pros and cons of somatic markers?

A

Pros:
- permit organisms to make optimal decisions
- emotional state facilitates logical reasoning
Cons:
- cannot solely rely on it because decision options would just be good/bad

41
Q

How does damage to the vmPFC impact the Iowa Gambling task?

A

The participant keeps choosing from the riskier deck

42
Q

With what cognitive functions do emotions interact with?

A
  • fear
  • decision making
  • perception
  • attention
  • memory consolidation
43
Q

How do emotions influence perception and attention?

A
  • prioritization of processing sensory information with emotional significance
  • automatic detection of salient features
  • attentional bias to process sensory features with emotional significance
44
Q

What is perceptual awareness?

A

Emotion-related improvement in perception/attention to emotional words

45
Q

How is emotion and vision connected?

A
  • Amygdala receives input from late stages of visual processing
  • Amygdala provides feedback to all stages of the ventral visual stream
46
Q

What is the memory modulation hypothesis?

A

Amygdala enhances memory consolidation in MTL, dIPFC, vlPFC
- by axonal projections
- by release of hormones

47
Q

How can we regulate emotions?

A
  • situation selection: individual changes behavioral pattern in an antecedent way to avoid the emotional encounter altogether (e.g. fear of flying → always travel by train)
  • cognitive reappraisal of negative emotion: interpret meaning of elicitor such that it alters its emotional impact
  • compare decreasing negative emotions associated with negative pictures with passively looking at the negative pictures
  • increased activity in dorsal frontoparietal attentional network when actively decreasing
  • reduced amygdala activity when decreasing negative emotions
48
Q

How do we understand the action and emotions of others?

A
  • Theory of mind
  • Intentional stance (assuming that other’s behave consistent with their current mental state - possibly different from one’s own mental state)
49
Q

What are mirror neurons?

A

Neurons increase activity when passively viewing someone else’s action

50
Q

Why do mirror neurons exist?

A
  1. Provide means for understanding social actions
  2. Link between perceptual and motor established simply by experience
51
Q

What areas of the brain get activated when taking a third-person perspective?

A
  • vmPFC
  • paracingulate cortex
  • temporal polar cortex
  • superior temporal sulcus
52
Q

What 4 components are in the model of empathy (explain)?

A

Emotion sharing:
- automatic perception-action coupling and shared somatic-emotional representation relying on somatosensory cortex, insula and ACC

Self-awareness:
- distinction between self and other: processing in parietal lobe, PFC and insula

Mental flexibility:
- adopt perspectives of someone else: medial and dorsolateral PFC

Emotion regulation:
- emotional and somatic states generated by engaging executive control mechanisms in ACC, lateral and vmPFC

53
Q

Give an example of direct reactivation in somatic marker hypothesis.

A

We see something scary, feel fear, our heart starts beating and sweaty palms

54
Q

Give an example of indirect reactivation in somatic marker hypothesis.

A

If we had a bad experience with a dog before, we feel anxious whenever we see a dog, even if it’s friendly.

Cognitive Neuroscience (6 decks)

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